Phil Dickens

While there are many pieces talking generally about the problems and limitations of representative democracy, this series looks at and debunks specific 'tactical voting' strategies and election narratives from an anti-electoral, working class perspective.

Tomorrow's coordinated strike by public sector workers looks set to be larger than the one on 30 Novermber 2011 that was billed as a public sector 'general strike.' But what does that mean, and are we in any better position now, industrially, than we were then?

Why aren't we rising up? Whether the 'we' in question is young people, the British people, or the poor, this is a question asked an awful lot by both mainstream and leftist commentators. Austerity, job cuts, pay freezes, workfare, poverty, food banks, police brutality, political corruption - it's all the rage, so why aren't we all enraged?

The Public and Commercial Services Union has in the past year worked to sabotage a dispute between its members at Hewlett Packard and their employer. This has culminated in the betrayal of one of their own reps, John Pearson, after he was unjustly sacked by the company.

If there’s one thing, politically, that I want to happen in 2014 it’s for leftists to drop the demand for a 24 hour general strike from above and start building for an all out general strike from below.

Dan Hodges has written an article for the Telegraph, using the horrific murder of Bijan Ebrahimi as an excuse to attack “the dark side of working class Britain.” This is an attempt to address the points he has side-stepped for the benefit of his polemic.

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